Waitt Foundation (USA) supports a new ECOMERS project on MPAs in the
Mediterranean Sea
---The Waitt Foundation
With the rapid decline of marine life and resources, the primary mission of the Waitt Foundation is to protect the oceans from the harmful impacts of overfishing. To achieve this, the foundation directs his efforts toward facilitating the creation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), engaging stakeholders to improve the management of fisheries, fostering sustainable solutions, and raising public awareness.
The Waitt Foundation supports a variety of national and international programs concentrating on ocean conservation initiatives and marine related issues. By increasing global awareness, the main goal is to reverse the current decline of ocean life while inspiring humanity to make informed choices that contribute to healthy marine ecosystems.
The foundation’s current funding priorities are focused on creating, strengthening, and expanding MPAs and promoting Sustainable Solutions.
Rapid Ocean Conservation (ROC) Grants Program - a project of the Waitt Foundation
The ROC Grants Program provides small grants with a quick turnaround time for solutions to emerging conservation issues. This complements the Waitt Foundation’s existing major grants program and is responsive to conservation opportunities, supports higher-risk ideas at a low financial cost.
To know more about the foundation http://waittfoundation.org
---The effects of organization and spatial design of Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas on their ecological performance
This project has recently received the support of the Waitt Foundation, in the framework of the ROC Grants Program.
Principal Investigators: Claudia Scianna and Paolo Guidetti
In collaboration with: Federico Niccolini (University of Macerata, Italy) and Steve Gaines (UCSB, USA)
Rationale: Marine Protected Areas are being implemented worldwide showing the evidence of clear benefits for target species and ecosystems. Despite their potential, both ecological and
socioeconomic responses to protection vary dramatically from place to place. Some studies provided the evidence of a number of factors explaining this variation (e.g. enforcement, habitat types), but most of the variability in MPAs outcomes still remains unexplained. The goal of our project is to investigate other possible sources of variability at a number of Mediterranean MPAs. We posit that a key uninvestigated source of variation may be linked to the management, the design and, more specifically, the organizational aspects of MPAs. This study, hopefully, will achieve the important result of improving the available scientific knowledge about the performance of
Mediterranean MPAs. A new point of view in MPAs science will be developed thanks to the interaction of two different disciplines: ecology and organizational analysis.
